rEBBUAET 25, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



261 



be given, and for obvious reasons. Some 

 manufacturers are ignorant and stupid, the 

 ultra-conservatives; others are intelligent, 

 progressive, wide-awake. Great advances, 

 however, have been made, and the good 

 work still continues. The older men among 

 us can remember the time when American 

 mills and factories rarely employed a chem- 

 ist, except when difficulties were encoun- 

 tered which could only be solved by anal- 

 ysis. Even then the cost of the work was 

 paid most grudgingly as if it were an 

 extravagance which should have been 

 avoided. Now it is usual for manufacturing 

 corporations to maintain laboratories, in 

 which chemists, too often underpaid, are 

 regularly employed. Some companies, the 

 General Electric Company, for example, 

 spend large sums of money on research, 

 but others are more niggardly. Here we 

 have much to learn from Germany. Her 

 great advances in chemical industries have 

 been made possible by the employment of 

 trained investigators, whose duty it is to 

 discover new products of value and to im- 

 prove processes. Men who had shown abil- 

 ity in the solution of unsolved problems 

 were chosen for this work, and not mere 

 analysts only. In Germany, more than in 

 any other country, has the commercial 

 value of scientific intelligence been real- 

 ized. The routine man has his place, but 

 the thinker outranks him. When American 

 employers are willing to spend as much time 

 and money on research as they now spend on 

 law, their economic conditions will be much 

 improved. The chemist who solves an im- 

 portant problem, or who shows how to avoid 

 waste, might well be paid as much as the 

 lawyer, who, after all, may only lose his 

 ease. Although we are improving, we still 

 have far to go. 



A congress of this kind is of slight im- 

 portance unless it can bring forth sugges- 

 tions which shall help in the future ad- 



vancement of science. It is, of course, 

 pleasant to meet together, to compare notes 

 and to form new friendships, but some- 

 thing more serious and permanent is de- 

 manded. What does science need, and what 

 are its weak points? These are questions 

 worth considering. 



So far, with few exceptions, science has 

 advanced through the efforts of individuals, 

 and not by any definite system. The result 

 is, especially in chemistry, an ill-balanced 

 body of knowledge, overdeveloped in some 

 directions, underdeveloped in others. The 

 individual studies the subject which inter- 

 ests him and has attracted his attention, 

 and too often fails to think of chemistry as 

 a whole. Our knowledge is full of gaps, 

 and these frequently occur where one would 

 least expect to find them. We know many 

 physical constants, for example, but for no 

 single substance have all the desirable data 

 been determined. This is a condition which 

 should be remedied— but how? 



The essential thing, it seems to me, is that 

 there should be greater cooperation among 

 investigators, and a subordination of per- 

 sonal interests to the general welfare. 

 There are individual geniuses, of course, 

 whose imagination reaches out into the un- 

 known, and brings back wonderful discov- 

 eries; but such men must work alone and 

 never in harness. They are the glorious 

 few; I speak for the laborious many. Nor 

 do I suggest any cheek to individual enter- 

 prise, only that it should be supplemented 

 and helped by some intelligent system. 



In every department of science there are 

 problems too large for any single worker to 

 handle, and here cooperation is possible. In 

 this direction astronomers have set us an 

 example, and observatories now combine 

 their resources in mapping the starry heav- 

 ens. Each observatory takes a definite zone, 

 and the work goes on systematically. Such 

 cooperation is practicable, and it leads to 



